By Rizwan Zeb (7/30/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: The growing distrust between Afghanistan and Pakistan rose to its peak on 9 July, when a mob attacked and destroyed the Pakistani embassy in Kabul. Kabul alleges Islamabad is supporting Taliban elements and that these Taliban remnants are crossing freely into sanctuaries on Pakistan’s side of the tribal area. Recently Pakistani paramilitary personnel and an Afghan militia exchanged fire on the Mohmand Agency border, when the latter claimed that Pakistani forces had entered their territory.By Jaba Devdariani (7/30/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: During the last years, speculations were mounting in academic and policy communities that the United States and the EU were turning a blind eye on apparent lack of progress in democratic development of the three South Caucasus countries. It was seen as symptomatic that the South Caucasus started to be increasingly viewed in the context of the broader Central Asia region, rather than as a part of Eastern Europe. This trend was dominant in U.By Andrew McGregor (7/16/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: The reaction from the Tatar leaders of official Russian Islam to the American campaign in Afghanistan was mixed. Mufti Talgat Tadjuddin referred to the ‘aggressive, half-learned, maniacally ambitious rabble forming the core of the Taliban’. Siberian Mufti Nafigulla Ashirov condemned the American ‘crusade’ against Islam and warned of the threat posed to Russia by a permanent US military presence in Central Asia.By Blanka Hancilova (7/16/2003 issue of the CACI Analyst)
BACKGROUND: The latest opinion poll conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in April suggests that if elections were held “tomorrow”, the pro-presidential “Alliance for New Georgia” led by Shevardnadze (officially formed as an election bloc in March 2003 by Shevardnadze’s Citizens’ Union of Georgia, the rather weak Socialist and National Democratic parties, along with some influential, but discredited governors and the Greens), would barely clear the 7% threshold necessary to gain seats in the parliament. While the opposition is still fragmented, on the whole it enjoys considerable popular support. In the June 2002 local elections, the Labor Party and the National Movement Party, two populist parties running under the slogan of “Tbilisi without Shevardnadze” emerged on top of the race in the capital Tbilisi, clearly showing the increasing power of the protest vote.The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst is a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Council, Washington DC., and the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. For 15 years, the Analyst has brought cutting edge analysis of the region geared toward a practitioner audience.
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